NO SPORTS UNTIL WE'RE WELL.

• Author: Zirin, Dave
• Position: EDGE OF SPORTS

In 2020, everyone wrote their analyses of COVID-19 and sports. But the truth is that we were flying blind.

No one in charge of the global, multibillion-dollar sports world knew what to do. They gave us hermetically sealed "bubbles" and empty stadiums; tons of rescheduling and breathless updates if a player was even in the vicinity of someone who had a positive test. Basically, once the games restarted in July 2020, without fans in the stands, it was an exercise in fulfilling lucrative television broadcast deals and praying for the best.

In 2021, we had a decidedly different narrative. First, after the development of the vaccines, the sports world threw open its doors to fans. The Summer Olympics, after a yearlong delay, geared up for Tokyo. They all acted as if having a vaccine would squash any concerns that we were rushing headlong into a burning building.

Now, even as we see breakthrough cases, mutations that act faster than the vaccine because of global vaccine inequity, and a section of the population that refuses to do its part to curb the virus, the sports world remains committed to the idea of normalcy. It acts as though it can bullishly ram through this idea of "business as usual," despite all evidence to the contrary.

The NBA not only held a packed NBA Finals, it also celebrated the Milwaukee fans who gathered by the tens of thousands outside of the Bucks' arena in close contact to watch the game on a massive screen. The Olympics were full steam forward in Tokyo, a highly concentrated city with a very low vaccination rate. Despite all efforts to keep the tens of thousands of visitors on lockdown, the results were predictable: a surge in new cases.

In the NFL, if there is a COVID-19 outbreak on a team, there will be no rescheduling. Instead, a team will be attributed a loss and every player on the squad will lose a game check. If this happens more than once or twice, the entire legitimacy of the season will be in question.

Then there's college football. We have seen young students, much to the delight of the NCAA's broadcast partners, gather 100,000 strong, blithely oblivious to their role in keeping the virus alive and spreading.

I get it: Sports are the closest thing to a uniform community activity that many of us have in this country. It's our collective space and, increasingly, our public square. In a country riven by manufactured divisions of every conceivable type, the playing field is...